News > Venezia Città Campus and Biennale: FVCMS presents the project dossier
On Friday, December 16, at the Procuratie Vecchie headquarters in Piazza San Marco, Fondazione Venezia Capitale Mondiale della Sostenibilità presented its dossier containing the project streams and thematic workstreams currently involving over 30 partners, including founding and co-founding members. At the end of the Steering Committee meeting, attended by the President of the Foundation, Renato Brunetta, and the two Vice Presidents – Governor of the Veneto Region Luca Zaia and Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro – two of the upcoming highlights were announced: "Venezia Città Campus" and the “Biennale della Sostenibilità”.
The meeting also provided an opportunity to illustrate the Foundation’s nine thematic areas, established through an analysis conducted to identify a broad set of macro-level opportunities and challenges. These aim to bring the Venice territorial system significantly closer to its sustainable development goals.
Here are the initial projects emerging from the workstream activities:
- Hydrogen Workstream: Mapping is underway for H2 supply chain competencies among companies and institutions in the metropolitan area and the broader Veneto region, covering upstream (generation), midstream (storage and distribution), and downstream (end-use) sectors. This represents the first instance of direct involvement by founding and co-founding members in a workstream initiative.
- Venezia Città Campus Workstream: Academic coordination activities are ongoing among participating institutions to expand high-quality, international academic offerings. On the infrastructure development front, a declaration of intent will be signed between the Academies and the Comune di Venezia to build the Campus City across hubs in the historic city center and Via Torino (Mestre).
- VeniSIA – Innovation Workstream: Second year of the VeniSIA accelerator (2022-23) focused on co-innovation and startup acceleration addressing climate change and the circular economy. Expansion into two new acceleration initiatives covering sustainable tourism and cultural productions (jointly with CDP Venture Capital and LVentures) and future farming (supported by MUR-PNRR funds).
Furthermore, the Foundation is heavily involved in executing a series of cross-cutting projects whose scope spans the entire thematic spectrum of activities or serves as key enablers for the success of individual Foundation initiatives. Three cross-cutting projects are currently underway:
- "Workstream Zero": The creation of a reference target scenario for the Foundation, shared by all partners as an overarching vision and transformation roadmap. This map will guide member-driven activities toward results consistent with building an integrated model of sustainable development for Venice and its metropolitan territory—with positive impacts across the entire Veneto region—which constitutes the ultimate purpose of the Foundation. Alongside this scenario, an integrated system of sustainability indicators will be developed (an urban sustainability index tailored to the specific context of the Venetian territory) to track progress toward the target scenario.
Elaboration of a preliminary study on the feasibility of using sustainable bonds to help finance selected project initiatives supported by the Foundation. An in-depth analysis of the role the Foundation can play in promoting and/or implementing such financing instruments—including assistance in defining tailor-made sustainability KPIs for Venice and supporting their monitoring—starting with a pilot application.
- "Workstream Ten" – Biennale della Sostenibilità: The biennial organization in Venice of a global-scale event dedicated to promoting, sharing, discussing, and exchanging best sustainability practices across local administration, scientific research, and business. The event follows an approach that blends ongoing local experience (bottom-up) with international aspirations (top-down). The initiative aims to make Venice, every two years, the global gathering place for sharing ideas and best practices in urban sustainability. The concept, currently being finalized as a major citywide event, may be structured around two main operational tracks: (i) the presentation of an international award for best practice in sustainability, and (ii) a cluster of seminars and/or exhibition sub-events, each dedicated to one of the Foundation’s thematic areas and organized in partnership with major international institutions and networks in that field, enabling direct comparison between the Foundation's outputs and international best practices gathered by partner institutions (under a hub-and-spoke model).
